By Jem Morgenstern
Ron Clark was pinned under an overturned cattle truck - right under the gas tank, which was mangled and leaking fluid over his body. His jaw was broken, his leg was twisted, and he felt a sharp pain in his back that turned out to be a dislocated vertebrae. He could only smell the gasoline that drenched his clothes and wet his skin. He could hear the other children, his friends, crying out - some sounding in agony, some begging to be killed because the pain they were in was unbearable, some praying. Ron himself prayed for the first time in awhile, as he’d recount 30 years later in an interview with Dennis Romboy for the Deseret News from June 10th, 1993, which coincided with the dedication of the memorial erected in remembrance of the accident in Carcass Wash.
“I kept asking ‘why why why?’” Ron said.
Tom Heal and Brian Roundy were both tasked with making their way up Hole-in-the-Rock Road towards Escalante to find help after each narrowly avoided entrapment. Tom had tried jumping from the back of the cattle truck as it began to veer backwards, but his foot caught and he was pulled into the wreck. He found himself buried beneath loads of camping gear with several broken ribs, but he was able to wriggle himself out from beneath the truck, after which he quickly passed out. When he woke, Kilmer Roundy, Brian’s dad, handed him a canteen and sent him with Brian up the road. They expected to walk the whole 47-mile stretch of dirt road, but the boys came across a rancher just two miles up, who drove them into town and brought them to the police station.
It took about four hours to get help from Escalante and the surrounding towns down to the crash site. The rescuers were able to pull bodies from the wreckage by jacking up one side of the truck, holding it up with flat stones, and then jacking up the other side of the truck to do the same. It was a long, delicate process. Eventually, it came to a point where two boys were left beneath the truck, Ron Clark and Lee Colver. The two were pinned by opposite ends of the truck. Lee had been riding on top of the cabin with two other boys, one of which jumped from the truck as it rolled back and was subsequently crushed to death under its wheels, the other rolled across the dirt and avoided the same fate. Lee was pinned into place by a rock and a steel toolbox that was pressed down by the weight of the overturned truck and crushed his right foot. The rescuers weren’t sure if they would be able to save both Ron and Lee. If they jacked up the side of the truck trapping Ron, it seemed likely the truck would roll again and crush Lee. If they jacked up the side that pinned Lee, the precariously stacked stones holding Ron’s side of the truck would likely collapse and the full weight of the vehicle would fall right onto him. The rescuers explained the situation to the boys, both told the rescuers to save the other. Both braced themselves for death.
But both were saved.
“Something physically or emotionally reminds me of it daily,” said Ron in his Deseret News interview, “I recall the day as if it were last Monday.”